Abstract

An eight-channel audio work for the Tapestry Gallery in Falkland Palace

Falkland Palace and Falkland Estate including the House of Falkland, Fife, Scotland with
published catalogue, three peer-reviewed texts and conference proceedings And a mention in
award-winning bbc radio 4 documentary Hearing the Past?!
A multi-media art project undertaken by David Chapman and I on the Falkland Estate in Fife,
Scotland between 2008 – 10. The various sound, video and live works we made over this
time drew on personal responses to the site as well as the testimonies of others with a
specific relationship to Falkland and its rich vein of intriguing geological and archaeological
features and historical narratives. The works applied innovative acoustical research from the
University of York.
The works produced were: Arcadia (2008) an eight-channel audio work for the Tapestry
Gallery in Falkland Palace; Falkland Audiowalk (2009) a downloadable mp3 audio piece;
Temple of Decision, (2010) an HD video incorporating specially-commissioned reconstructive
acoustics work from the University of York; the six-channel audio installation Cascading
(2010) and the live work Chase a Yard Worse than Last (2010).
Additionally a catalogue entitled Resounding Falkland was produced which included
commissioned texts by Christopher Woodward, Eric Laurier, Damian Murphy, David Jones,
REF Outputs Feedback
the artists and an introduction by Ninian Stuart. This is downloadable from:
http://www.resoundingfalkland.com/.
In the text Sept 2011 ‘The Caress of the Audio: Re-sounding Falkland’, Social Semiotics Vol.
21, No. 4, pp: 517-529 we asked what the role of touch is in the creation and experience of
audio-visual media. This project and the methodologies employed we believed opened up
issues in relation to the use of media technologies to investigate and re-interpret historical
actions, processes, the senses and memory. The special issue “Touch” of Social Semiotics
was guest edited by Australian academic Dr Anne Cranny-Francis whom we first met when
we gave a joint paper on the Falkland project at an early stage at the conference Sounding
Out 4 (an international symposium on Sound in the Media in Sunderland in September 2008).
We were interviewed in her guest-edited and refereed issue of the Australian online journal
Scan: a journal of media arts culture. We also wrote ‘Falkland: a Sonic Investigation of Place’,
for the Journal of Media Practice, Vol.11, No.3. pp: 231-242 (December 2010). In May 2011
David Chapman and I attended the 5th International FKL Symposium on Soundscape in
Florence, Italy to give a paper entitled Falkland: a sonic investigation of place. The
proceedings from the Keep an Ear On Symposium (including a reworked 2000 word text
based on our paper) have now been published.
Arcadia was cited in a BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Hearing the Past (2011), produced
by Jane Reck. This won the Royal Society Radio Prize for the best scripted/ edited radio
programme or podcast. This is one of the annual ABSW Science Writer’s Awards for Britain
and Ireland (ASBW – Association of British Science Writers).
This multidisciplinary work was made in collaboration with David Chapman (Senior Lecturer in
Media Production at the University of East London). It reflects our shared interest in sound –
and was built on our differing expertise. My background is in Fine Art with a particular interest
in relational, participatory and site-based practice. David has a background in broadcast
documentary, film studies and music.